I want to share my thoughts and experiences as a transgendered person, in hopes they will in some small way, connect with and help others in their journey.

I chose the title, “Out of the Box”, for several reasons. The foremost reason is it has been only since October of 2000, that I have emerged from the ‘box’ of my closeted existence as a transgendered individual. So, I am OUT for the first time in half a century of hiding. My life of secret longing was one analogous to having a chronic low grade fever that could and did spike into a full blown trauma at any moment. Years were spent wondering why I desired to be female, but I had no one to talk to. I was in a claustrophobic box of my own making, reinforced by my fears of discovery, ridicule and shame. Yet, I knew, whenever I had the opportunity to dress as a woman, it felt RIGHT. How could this be? The answers were waiting, but I had no resources to discover what they were. In future sharing, I hope to chronicle my experiences, especially as they pertain to my faith and the friends who have helped me so much.

The second reason for being “Out of the Box” is to deal with the issue of expectations and roles. We all experience this in our lives. Our parents present the first set of expectations, with the first one related to our birth gender. From there, our roles as child, student, teammate, friend, lover, employee, mate, parent all are formed within our families and the society at large.

I am not a scholar, but more an intuitive person. My responses to the roles I have lived out and the expectations on me have been instrumental in shaping me and my personal identity, as it would anyone. As an only child, I became a ‘people-pleaser’. It was safer to be a chameleon in order to fit in situations and avoid conflict. I had no siblings to give me the experience of how to argue or negotiate. To this day, it is painful to be in the midst of stressful situations. My gender difference was submerged to avoid any chance of conflict. This made me very closed emotionally, and over time, affected my marriage. When I finally reached the point I could no longer hide, it was mostly because of the damage it was doing to my ability to be completely open to my wife. As a result of sharing my innermost thoughts and feelings, we are closer than we have ever been in 32 years of knowing one another. Do not get me wrong; it was not easy! We cried, talked, prayed and studied for months before resolving this challenge to our marriage to reach the place we are today. It is to her great credit that she was so loving and willing to hear me out and challenge her own preconceptions to bring us to such understanding.

Finally, being “Out of the Box” means I am trying to build a new life as a transgendered person that includes my feminine persona. That includes finding opportunities to go into the ‘real’ world and live in female mode. I am developing friends outside the ‘closeted community’, taking in growth experiences like the seminar at Mount St. Mary’s College in Maryland, where three other T* sisters and I taught a class en femme on Gender Identity Issues. I recently helped represent my support group at the True Spirit Conference for F2M individuals, and I attended the Lake Erie Sister’s conference last November. It means I have had the joy of developing a personal look and a style. It means going OUT to restaurants, shopping, concerts, museums, even to church en femme. It has meant making the effort to visit face to face with two local pastors to ask them to consider what their position should be in bringing the gospel to the transgendered community. It means sitting on a sofa in a living room next to the mother-in-law of the hostess of a house music concert, who has no clue who I am, and being willing to engage in conversation, woman to woman. I have dreamed my whole life of this kind of ‘normalcy’, and now thanks to the help and encouragement of others, I am building a new type of life.

The final point in being Out of the Box is renouncing the Box of ‘LABELS’.

I do not know which of these many initials fit me. Am I CD? TG? TS? No, I am ME. By throwing off the tyranny of the labels, it frees me to live what is best for me, not being in the box of others expectations, even the most well-meaning of people. There is no agenda to follow, no timetable to meet, no schedule of events to run through. My focus is on being the kind of PERSON God has made me. Whether dressing in male, female or mixed clothing, I am finding what counts is how I am as a person. Do I encourage people? Am I helpful and friendly? Do I leave behind a positive image as a person, so the next time someone meets a transgendered individual, they will not prejudge him or her as a ‘menace to society’?

Ladies and gentlemen, I love to get dressed en femme---dressed up, down or sideways! I am still in the 'adolescent teenager' phase as far as my intense interest in clothing and makeup is concerned. Not an easy task for a 50 year old. That is one more box I am coming out of. To be fully feminine, I desire to join in the sisterhood of Genetic Girls in authentic ways. Yes, it is called 'passing' and it is my goal. I have vowed to be as honest as I can to anyone brave AND courteous enough to question me, but actually, I am asking OTHERS to get out of their own ‘boxes’ of prejudice, ignorance, bigotry and hate, to see me as a person. I assume there will be more than enough disappointments and dangers along the way (I will be sharing some that have already happened) But as one dear sister has taught me, optimism is often the most reasonable way to view life. Great things happen when we push ourselves ‘Out of the Box’!

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